Rightwing US supreme court justices are in trouble. So they’ve discovered feminism

At the start of her rallies, Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who defeated the equal rights amendment, always thanked her husband, Fred, for letting her out of the house.

Ah, those were the days.

Husbands have lost their control. And, it would seem, none more than the poor schlubs on the bench of the supreme court of the United States.

Before January 6, Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, the far-right activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, plunged deep into the “Stop the Steal” movement, which attempted to frame Joe Biden’s fair and free election as rigged. She sent dozens of texts to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, egging him on to overturn the election. Later, she claimed Clarence had nothing to do with it.

“Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America,” Ginni Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon in early 2022. “But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work.”

Nevertheless, questioned by the congressional January 6 committee as to whether she conferred with anyone about the texts, she allowed that she’d spoken to her “best friend” – Clarence. She couldn’t remember the “specifics”, she said. But “my husband often administers spousal support to the wife that’s upset.”

Meadows filed an amicus brief in Trump’s appeal to withhold documents from the investigators; the texts, including Ginni Thomas’s, were included in the subpoenaed materials. Clarence Thomas was the sole dissenter in the supreme court’s rejection of Trump’s appeal.

Jane Sullivan Roberts – Mrs Chief Justice John Roberts – earned over $10m recruiting conservative government lawyers to elite law firms precisely